School soccer field in Lincoln Park angers residents

February 29, 2008|By Robert Mitchum, Tribune reporter and Tribune reporter Monique Garcia contributed to this report.

Before the first ball is even kicked, a new soccer field under construction near the south end of Lincoln Park has already become a battleground between the Chicago Park District and neighborhood and park advocacy groups over the fair, open use of public land.

On Thursday night, more than 100 residents of the surrounding Lincoln Park and Gold Coast neighborhoods crowded into the Lincoln Park Library to express their anger over construction of the $2 million field, most of the money for which is being provided by the private Latin School of Chicago.

"This is the wrong location, the wrong construction, for the wrong cause," said Herbert Caplan, a lawyer for the Committee to Keep Lincoln Park Public, who organized the meeting.

Lincoln Park resident Jan Koch agreed. "What are we going to have left for the next 100 years? We're chipping it all away."

Critics of the field say that the Park District's plan to give the Latin School first dibs on using the park most weekday afternoons and weekends is a violation of the park's mission of serving the public. The leaders of several neighborhood and park advocacy groups also said the project, similar to one that was abandoned in 2002, was rushed to a vote without adequate public notification or input.

But Park District officials said the field represents a partnership between private and public organizations that improves Chicago parks at minimum cost to taxpayers.

"It's fabulous because the Park District has to put in very little money, but the public gets the benefit," Park District spokeswoman Jessica Maxey-Faulkner said. "There are some people who do not want this. But we have heard from a great deal of people who are saying they are glad to see that space put to use."

The new field, which will be synthetic turf, is being built on a 4-acre stretch of Lincoln Park along Lake Shore Drive north of the softball fields that run next to LaSalle Drive. Under the project approved in October 2006 by the Park District's Board, the Latin School will pay for construction of the field, while the Park District will take responsibility for lighting and maintenance.

In return, the Latin School will have a "priority permitting" arrangement with the Park District, in which the school will have exclusive use of the field for about 25 percent of the time it is open, Latin School spokeswoman Evelyne Girardet said. Most of that time will be on weekday afternoons and weekends during fall and spring, Girardet said.

Park advocacy groups said they are not happy about a private school being allowed to reserve what are often the peak hours that the soccer field would be used.

"It is public land given to a private institution for their primary use, and public land belongs to everybody else," Friends of the Parks President Erma Tranter said. "We want them to ensure public land remains public at all times."

Tranter also complained that her organization and other groups were not given enough notice about the project before it was voted on by the Park District.

Maxey-Faulkner said that representatives of the Park District met with the Lincoln Park Advisory Council in the months before the project was approved. But Jill Niland, president of the advisory council, said they were not informed about the Latin School's involvement in construction of the field.

Niland also said her group is concerned about the location of the field, which Maxey-Faulkner described as an "underutilized" portion of the park.

"Someone's idea of underutilized is someone else's idea of open space and greenery," Niland said. "We're filling every little bit of an already full Lincoln Park with facilities and stuff. That's a valid concern."